THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
FORT MASSACHUSETTS AND A LIGHTHOUSE ARE LANDMARKS OF SHIP ISLAND
Campfires of Indians were superseded by those of the earliest French colonists in 1699. Later,
the English encamped here during the search for pirate Laffite. The fort was designed by Jef
ferson Davis when he was Secretary of War, in the fifties, and fortified by President Lincoln's order
during the War. It was named for the first Federal warship to land after hostilities began. The
American Legion now preserves it. At Ship Island, on a foggy January day in 1721, anchored the
good ship La Baleine, with nearly a hundred seasick and voyage-weary Paris maidens, the
"casquette girls" sent out to marry colonists. Their name was derived from the casquettes, or
chests, which contained their dowries--two coats, two shirts, six headdresses, and other apparel.
who forsook her northern suitor to be her
father's companion.
Would you delve deeper into lotus land?
Drive on then to Pascagoula, which was
"unperturbed by the American Revolution,
by the creation of the United States Gov
ernment, even by the War between the
States."
Be prepared to believe that its river
really "sings"-a monotone song, they say,
like the humming of myriad bees in flight
and leave it to the geologists to settle
whether the "song" is generated by grat
ing of sand on slate bottom, by escaping
natural gas, or by a queer species of fish.
BOATBUILDERS AND BAGMAKERS
They build the luggers at Pascagoula,
still fashioned after models brought from
France and Spain, that make the long Gulf
crossing to Campeche Bank for tons of red
snappers (page 315).
At Moss Point a huge factory produces
white paper from yellow pine; another
makes paper into bags for shoppers in far
distant cities. Experts fashion fish lures
and decoys. Jackson County growers ship
from here the papershell pecans and other
varieties they developed.
Yet, circled by sterile pine ridges, cupped
in a flat bowl of marshy bayous, its traffic
impeded by a toll bridge, Pascagoula seems
sequestered from affairs that trouble men
elsewhere-from Spanish revolution, sit-
down strikes, resettlement projects, or Su
preme Court debates.
A woman was hanging out the week's
wash at the 219-year-old Spanish fort, with
its walls of oyster shells bound by moss
and mortar masonry. Grass grew high in
a historic cemetery with its horizontal
slabs, foreign language epitaphs, and rusty
wrought-iron crosses.
THE WEATHER AND THE JONESES
Pascagoula is busy, but never restless.
Its old families are bound to their soil by
generations of interrelated ancestors.
"It looks like rain today," ventured a
stranger.
"Mebbe," replied a citizen.
"Fine weather we've been having."
"So-so."
"Do you know the Jones family?"
"Can't say I do."
"Well, I'm sorry. I've been looking for
a cousin of mine-"
"Oh, you a cousin of the Joneses, stran
ger? Come right in and rest a mite, and
I'll take you up there. Why didn't you
say you were the Joneses' cousin in the
first place? Mighty glad to meet you.
And, yes, it does look like rain today."
Machines have come to Mississippi. But
there still is time to go fishing, to attend
political rallies and "protracted meetin's,"
to "go visiting" for days at a time, and to
know all your cousins.
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